SPOTTLIGHT — A Tiny Home, Is It For You?

It seems that everyone has a home they dream about. It used to be that you would save and save and save for the big McMansion of your dreams.

These days the dream seems to be a whole lot smaller. The tiny home craze is a hot topic.

The average tiny house is 400-500 square feet and the average cost is roughly $20,000 to $25,000.

As a society, we are becoming much more sustainable and that excludes McMansions. And who wants to clean all those rooms!

The tiny-home buyer is not your average buyer, clearly! They are empty nesters preparing for retirement, or they are millennials, who want to be free and live wherever they like at any given moment, with little or no debt, less responsibility, and less stuff.

One key attribute of a tiny home is there is no space for a lot of stuff. One big reason people want to downsize is that ours is a disposable society. We buy what ever we want, whenever we can. Needless to say, that has caused us to have a whole bunch of junk in our homes that we really don’t care about. Everything is so easy to buy because it’s so “inexpensive.” In the long run that inexpensive stuff usually ends up costing you more. Think Ikea! Oh, my goodness, when you go there, everything is soooooo cheap! You just can’t help yourself picking up this and that because you might need it someday. So it all ends up at home usually tossed aside after the first use. Hello basement!! Don’t even get me started about basements…they are the storehouse of clutter. Which brings me back to tiny homes. Basically, there is no room for any of this kind of stuff. To some this might be a real plus and to others it’s a total deal breaker.

Here are some tiny house pros and cons:

Pro

• Affordability. Pay cash and you are done! No mortgage.

• Energy efficient. Small utility bills and taxes.

• Clutter free. You produce less waste.

• It’s easy to move your home around if it’s on wheels.

• You can design your own house.

• Lowers your carbon footprint.

Con

• Not much storage space.

• No personal space. Lack of privacy and that can be tough on relationships.

• Not good for pets.

• It’s difficult to find a place to site/park it.

• Difficult for a family.

• Zoning regulations may require a minimum-size dwelling that is larger than that of a tiny home.

HGTV has made the tiny house craze just that, a craze. It’s forcing municipalities to embrace these homes as legal residences and to rethink their zoning laws. As the movement grows so do the neighborhoods for these homes. It’s a slow process but it is ongoing which is a positive.

You can find lots of blogs online about homeowners who have latched onto the craze and built their dream tiny home. There are also the blogs of homeowners who have done just that only to abandon that style of living to go back to more square footage. I have found that people usually give it a year, at least, to see if they can adapt to the smaller living place. Could you?